


Writer's Block

by Shatterpath



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:39:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatterpath/pseuds/Shatterpath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>August thinks on his path and motivations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Writer's Block

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even care much for this character, but clearly, something about him called to me enough for this piece to ring true.

The typewriter is a tool. As is the pen, the pencil, a stick of charcoal scratched against a piece of driftwood. All of them tools for a man on the run. Not from the law, or a death threat, or something melodramatic like that. On the run from himself.

 

I have been on the run since I went from liar to coward.

 

For twenty-eight years I have run from myself, from the memory of her sweet, infant face, from the knowledge that I will have to pay the piper eventually. The world around me is an ill-fitting suit of clothes, never quite comfortable. Oh, I find some solace in the sins of this world, nearly feeling the wind through my ass' ears as I play the fool again and again.

 

The Blue Fairy may have granted Papa's wish that I were a real boy, but I still feel wooden inside. It's hard to feel, to connect with the deadened, gray people of this forsaken world. Still, I search, scouring the world for wonder and curiosity. Running from myself, pouring my conflict onto page after page of words. It's the strongest feelings I have and more mundanely, earns me cash to keep running. At least running away, always running away, has taught me how to keep moving. The right documents, the right connections, the right paths to take from here to there.

 

There is aching beauty in this world, a man dead inside can still see that, and I keep feet and wheels churning the dirt and cleaning the asphalt in pursuit of those wonders. I have paced every continent, marveled at the beautiful places, be they crowded with people or so isolated I have to wonder if a foot has ever tread there. With my inadequate heart, heavy in my chest, and a strong voice to cover the fear and shame, I use words to enchant others.

 

Oceans and continents away is not enough to save me from my destiny.

 

Crying out with the pain, the still-false feeling heart in my chest hammering, I am reminded that I cannot run any longer. It's happened, clearly. Emma has stepped onto the path of destiny. I wonder if she hates it as much as I do.

 

But there is no running now, for the pain driving me back to where this all started, drives me like a man hunted, drives the words from me. Where they once flowed from me with ease enough to carve myself a place in this world, now they leave me adrift and helpless. Like that pathetic raft in the raging sea, the massive sea beast of a whale hunting me down once more.

 

I don't know Storybrooke, for I came here first, before the town arrived, confused and scared and alone. My Papa's voice rang in my ears, strengthened my weak heart and I gathered up Emma's tiny, frail body to set out with purpose. Just me and her against the world.

 

For awhile anyway.

 

Tense and fearful, I pause there in the wet, cool humid of the place where I was reborn of a sort. The sign is a border, a tingle of awareness that I cannot place. It's time now, to help save them and myself.

 

There is a blonde woman there to greet me in the sleepy burg, standing with a boy of perhaps ten, and they stare at me intently, question my being here, in this cursed place. My boyhood memories, hazy as they are, worry at the puzzle, is that her? Does she look like the sweet and scary Snow White? Like towering Prince James who was always so kind to me, adjusting my hat and smiling? I don't know, but the murcurial eyes burn against my back as I drive away.

 

I don't know that I will ever write again.

 

But if I do, I will do it for her.


End file.
